The Downside of Cross-Cultural Bonding

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I had just gotten off of my first deployment to Iraq in the summer of 2003 and everyone in my company was feeling exceptionally blissful because we had just conquered the Iraqi Army in an epic confrontation of warfare. We were beaming with pride and we assumed that our fighting days were over. Remember, this is 2003 and we weren’t experts on nation building, so you can’t hold it against us for not predicting things to come.

We did a lot of drinking when we came back from that deployment. Not just a lot, but a destructive amount of alcohol entered our bodies at this time. It was the kind of drinking that has Marines making spontaneous decisions that will end poorly. My poor decision occurred after I had only been back in the States for two months. Some Marines got married when they were drunk. Others might get some sort of DUI, public intoxication, or assault charge. What was my drunken decision? After only being home for a short period, I volunteered for another deployment. This type of shanghaiing in the Marine Corps is known as being, “Tun Taverned.”

Tun Taverned (tun tav-ern-ed) adverb. 1. The eager enlistment, reenlistment, or willingness to volunteer for deployment while under the influence of alcohol or hung-over. 2. The idea to volunteer for any mission in the United States Marine Corps while intoxicated in a professional drinking establishment or barracks location. [Derived from the drinking establishment known as Tun Tavern, a saloon once located in Philadelphia, PA that is commonly thought to be the birthplace of the Continental Marines]

Before I knew it, I was boarding a ship and heading towards the Middle-East again. I was with a new group of guys, going to a familiar country. You’re a genius, Chewy! Only a smashed Marine would think that the name, “Iraq,” sounds like it would be a good idea. This is the eternal hypocrisy of military members. Marines are the most self-deprecating and bitchiest people on earth when they are operating in a warzone, but the second you take them out of there, they miss it.


I have no idea what that says, but it is the funniest psy-ops leaflet I’ve ever had to pass out. Iraqi: “Okay, buddy! Good Mistah! Good Bush!” When we got to Iraq, it was evident that it was vastly different from my first time there. For one, there was no significant threat of violence there at the time. This was the period in between “Mission Accomplished,” and the sectarian violence that absorbed the country for years. We happened to be there during a down period in hostility. We were also operating in a part of the country that I had never been. Al-Basrah was a large city on the Southeastern corner of Iraq. The area was controlled by the British Army, and our small contingent of Marines was linking up with them to perform joint military operations.

By joint military operations I mean that we were basically out there to make sure no one was stealing from the local oil field profiteers. I hated the notion that I was out there to be a police officer for these people—not because I had some deep held belief about my role in the military or our foreign policy…but because I knew I would make a terrible cop.

I’d never really been around British people before this stage of my life. To be honest with you, my only knowledge of the United Kingdom came from examining Benny Hill act like an idiot on PBS, and the film The Patriot. So you can understand my view of the British would be a bit skewed. The first conversation I had with one of the British soldiers was awkward at best. I did my best to try and make nice, but my sheltered American familiarity with British culture almost caused some big problems.

I yelled, “God save the Queen!” Yep, that was the first thing I said to them. I honestly thought that’s what you’re supposed to do.

I got a response from a random soldier, “Fuck the Queen!”

What? Something was not right.

I assertively asked the soldier, “What the fuck is wrong with Her Majesty?”

He responded, “We’re Scottish, save that shite for someone else.”

“You’re Scottish?! Like Braveheart and Trainspotting?! You must be rolling in H, huh?” I was a moron. I continued, “Do you know Duncan McCloud?” Alright, I wasn’t that naïve, but I was an American, so I had to be an asshole.

The young Scotsman looked furious, but he kept his cool.

So our senior officers, in their infinite wisdom, thought it would be a good idea to do a joint operation with us and the Scottish soldiers. It was basically an exchange program, where we would be going on patrol and reporting to their chain-of-command. I was chosen as one of the lucky ones that got to go out with the Scots on the next patrol.

I approached my sergeant right after I got the news, “Sergeant, can you get the LT to assign me an interpreter for the patrol?”

He responded, “The Brits already have one, you’re fine.”

“No, Sergeant, I meant for me…I can barely understand anything they say. They sound like those Pikeys from that Brad Pitt movie.” I wasn’t being a smartass, I was legitimately afraid of a language barrier compromising the patrol. I continued, “I mean…they’re not going to be playing the bagpipes when we’re going through urban Basra or anything…are they? Do they even make kilts in camouflage?”

“Get the fuck out of here, Chewy,” was his response.

We left early in the morning on a cool autumn day in Southern Iraq. The patrol started out well enough, until it got a bit uncomfortable after the Scottish officer halted the patrol and started giving out orders. I honestly didn’t know what he was telling us to do, so I turned around and asked the ginger soldier—I have friends that are gingers, so it’s ok for me to write that—behind me what was going on, “Can you ask your lieuftenant to speak English, please?”

“You’re a bloody xenophobe, boyo,” the soldier responded.

I was still in full asshole American mode, “Fuck no, I’m not a Xena-phobe…that show is awesome and Lucy Lawless is hot!” His blank ginger face was lost as he didn’t get my magnificent allusion to American telly.

See, I’ll be the first to admit that I am a grade-A nationalist. I can’t help it, I just think less of other people and where they’re from. This is not something I developed in the military either. I’ve had to struggle with this my whole life. When I was 15, I was eating dinner over at a football teammate’s house. It was a polite meal in suburban Minneapolis. His family had a good looking girl that was staying with them through an exchange program. As soon as I heard her speak, I had to chime in. Once she told me she was from Estonia, I basically went into a twenty minute tirade about how Estonians are just dumb Russians and that the only reason anybody in America knows about their insignificant country is because of awesome American screenwriters who penned them into the Encino Man script. She cried uncontrollably and I wasn’t invited back.

The patrol continued. After a while, I began to feel a bit alienated as we were supposedly doing a serious combat patrol. I didn’t see much, just a bunch of trashy locals—not all Iraqi’s are trashy, but Basrah is definitely the Detroit of Mesopotamia—and angry dogs. The Scots had on their pasty skinned war faces, but I was just looking around with confusion. I was confused for a couple of reasons. For one, I was still a young Marine, so I genuinely didn’t know what the hell was going on. Two, their Scottish accents were thick with verbal nonsense, and my simple hip-hop polluted mind couldn’t grasp their complicated dialect.

End of space